Bernard Marks

Bernard Marks, who has died aged 89, developed the employment agency founded
by his father Alfred into a high-street name that became synonymous with
office job opportunities for women in the post-war decades.

Alfred Marks had been a trainee hotel manager before launching an agency for catering staff from a small office in Frith Street, Soho, in 1919. He carved out a lucrative niche supplying waiters for the West End banqueting trade — at five shillings for a luncheon and seven-and-sixpence for a dinner, out of which he took commissions of sixpence and ninepence respectively. The business grew to be the largest of its kind, supplying catering staff in 70 countries.

Alfred was killed in an explosion in Richmond Park in 1942, while serving as a catering officer in the Home Guard. Bernard took up the reins of the diminished business after demobilisation in 1948 and set out to rebuild it.

Following the example of a rival firm, the Brook Street Bureau, which had reflected post-war social change by shifting its focus from domestic servants to office workers, Marks moved into the office staff market in 1956. In those days employment agencies still operated discreetly from upper-floor offices, but in 1960 Marks opened his first shopfront branch on the corner of Waterloo Bridge and the Strand. In the decade that followed, demand boomed for female “temps” as well as for permanent staff — and Marks liked to joke that as long as a candidate was breathing when she walked through the door, she could be found a job. He was a leading figure for many years in the Recruitment and Employment Services Confederation, which helped establish the legal framework within which agencies operated, and was an articulate spokesman for the sector in response to hostility from Labour politicians and trade unionists. From 1967 he published a quarterly survey which became the definitive source of information on pay levels for secretarial and office staff.

Having expanded to 100 branches throughout Britain, the Alfred Marks Bureau floated on the London stock exchange in 1969, and eight years later it was taken over by a Swiss firm, Adia — now Adecco, the largest recruitment business in the world. Bernard continued to run the Alfred Marks group on behalf of the new owners until his retirement in 1983.

He had by then been immortalised in Paul McCartney’s song Temporary Secretary: “Mister Marks, can you find for me/ Someone strong and sweet, fitting on my knee …/ Mister Marks, could you send her quick/ ’Cause my regular has been getting sick … / Mister Marks, I can pay her well/ If she comes along and can stay a spell.”

Bernard Montague Marks was born in London on October 11 1923, the eldest of Alfred’s four sons. He read Chemistry at Imperial College, London, but after Alfred’s death gave up his studies to enlist. Commissioned into the Royal West African Frontier Force, he served in Sierra Leone as battalion adjutant, staff captain and ADC to the area commander.

In 1974 he was co-author, with Shirley Flack, of Once Upon a Typewriter — the stories of 12 successful women who had begun their careers in the typing pool. In retirement, he served for two years on the Equal Opportunities Commission where — though quango bureaucracy was not his natural milieu — he did his best to promote the cause of women in management.

Bernard Marks was appointed OBE in 1984. A kindly, good-humoured man, he enjoyed playing golf at St George’s Hill and Coombe Hill.

His wife, Norma, and one of their two sons, Nicholas, predeceased him. He is survived by his long-time partner Joy Sampson, and by his son Stephen, whom he was visiting in Australia when he died.